[An Awakened Will: A sprout of defiance. Your authority over the world increases.]

Kallen stared at the notification for a while, trying to pinpoint why it felt unfamiliar, despite having seen something almost identical before.

And then it clicked.

He scrolled through his records and found the discrepancy.

The first had read: "A seed of defiance."

This one read: "A sprout of defiance."

Just a subtle shift in phrasing, but the difference felt as vast as heaven and earth.

When he had first awakened his Will, it made him feel omnipotent—as if he could split the seas down to their bedrock or command the mountains to soar into the skies. In that moment, he had felt like a god.

That illusion hadn't lasted long.

Reality had soon stripped him of such egoistic fantasies, leaving him bare and broken. He hadn't even had time to wallow in that delusion... life had only gotten worse since.

But this evolution... this was different.

It wasn't just an increase in strength. It felt like emerging from a shell—like stepping out of a sealed world, and finally touching the truth of reality with both feet and both hands.

The first stage had been the seed. In that shell, his world was small. Isolated. Controlled. Within those confines, his Will was absolute—he was a god in a fishbowl.

Now, that shell had broken.

His roots, had stretched into the unknown. And its shoot reaching toward the heavens.

It was... euphoric.

He felt freer than ever—and yet impossibly small.

His authority over the world had grown, yes. But so had his awareness of how vast that world truly was. Even his life, he realized, wasn't entirely his own.

'Interesting...' he mused, the thought curling like smoke in his mind.

And speaking of smoke...

A small explosion rattled in the distance, interrupting his thoughts. Then came coughing—choked, sputtering.

Kallen blinked and peered through a gap in the stone door. A thick column of dark gray smoke was rising from the room opposite his.

'Huh. That's a surprise. I had a neighbor?' he thought.

But curiosity quickly gave way to discomfort. The air turned stuffy, heavy. He began coughing too.

By instinct, he cracked the door open for a breath of fresh air.

Big mistake.

The smoke flooded in instantly, forcing him to step outside, arm raised to shield his nose and mouth. He trudged down the corridor, leaving the haze behind him, just as two figures emerged ahead, also fleeing the suffocating cloud.

He followed them silently, careful not to alert them with his steps.

One was a young girl on the cusp of womanhood, her form hinting at its development. The other was a young man, older, maybe Nestor's age, dressed in scholarly robes that suggested intelligence more than strength.

Once they cleared the smoke, both doubled over, coughing and hacking for air.

Then the young man turned, and froze.

His gaze locked onto Kallen.

Alarm flared in his eyes.

He stepped forward protectively, shielding the girl behind him, his posture tense and wary. He didn't recognize Kallen, and wasn't willing to take chances.

With a shimmer of light at his finger, a short sword blinked into his hand.

Kallen raised both arms in surrender, but continued his approach, unfazed.

The young man's jaw clenched. He took a step back with the girl, wary and confused, refusing to drop his guard.

Only once Kallen was fully clear of the smoke did the tension begin to shift.

---

Aeneas had predicted the risk that it could go wrong. It was his first time on trying to concoct this elixir after all.

One wrong calibration and boom.

The explosion wasn't massive, but the smoke was thick and acrid. It clawed at his throat, making him cough until his lungs burned. He grabbed Yula's wrist and pulled her out of the room before she could inhale more of it.

They stumbled through the corridor, hacking and wheezing, eyes watering from the sting.

"You alright?" he asked between coughs, glancing back at her.

She nodded faintly, trying to catch her self, clutching his robe.

They didn't speak further, not until the smoke had thinned. Once they'd escaped the haze, he leaned forward, hands on knees, trying to suck in cleaner air.

His mind was already racing; calculating how the failure had happened, what went wrong, how much material was lost...

But then he heard the sound of solid footsteps to his back, and he embarrassed. It seemed he had disturbed someone... but no one stayed at this side of the quarters.

He turned.

A boy was approaching them calmly and silently, through the smoke. His face unfamiliar. His build youthful. But there was something... unnatural about him.

His eyes held no fear. No hesitation. Not the kind of expression you'd expect from someone lost in an unknown place, and certainly not what you'd expect from a child meeting an orc. Their reputation was that scary.

The young man's instincts flared like sirens.

He immediately stepped forward, placing himself between the boy and Yula, thumb subtly grazing over the ring on his index finger. With a flicker of light, his short sword appeared in his hand, humming with runes.

Too calm. Too quiet.

He narrowed his eyes. The boy raised one hand in... surrender? But he still kept walking. That was the part that bothered him.

Surrender meant stopping. Not advancing casually through a fog of choking smoke as if it were mist in a dream.

He fought to keep his breathing steady, despite the lingering burn in his lungs.

'Who is he? How did he get in? What race is that? Valgorian? No, the skin color don't match. Not Elf-blood either. Human?'

Yula tugged lightly on his robe from behind. He could feel her unease—she was rarely this nervous. That was enough to keep his grip on the hilt tight.

And yet... the boy didn't draw a weapon. Didn't lash out. Didn't even flinch at the sight of the blade.

That was almost more unsettling than if he had.

He held his ground until the boy was cleared of the last tendrils of smoke. Only then did he speak, voice low and tense.

"Who are you?"